


A Certain Disposition Of Will

by Lykotheia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykotheia/pseuds/Lykotheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his fall, Loki finds himself remembering his days in Asgard. </p><p> </p><p>  But what he dreamed, his hosts did not know. They were clever. Perhaps cleverer than he, and they would have used it against him. <br/>   Images of Asgard, of Aesir, of <i>Thor</i> had filtered in through the cracks since he heard the shudder of the ground beneath his back when he finally landed, felt everything in him come loose and fly outward, visceral shrapnel, along the paths of the fractures in the planet’s surface. <br/>    It shattered him, and in that broken moment his defenses faltered, and it was enough. Through a fissure in some mental citadel, Thor slipped in, dominating that territory as readily as every other, and Loki fought unto exhaustion to force him out. <br/>But he had had to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Extra warnings: Shameless manhandling of Norse myth extras and comic book canon; cultural vacuum (due to a dearth of knowledge of Norse culture) buttressed by a strange Greco-Macedonian mixture. Hopefully no OOCness.

Madness, he had decided, was entirely relative. What seemed at once so plainly evident to him was the product of days—weeks, maybe?—of contemplation in the vacuum of isolation and space. For a time, he had been certain that the long stretch of darkness had undone him, that the stars streaking past were ribbons of his seidr, falling away. 

What indeed constituted a madman, and was it entirely cerebral? Radically diverging opinions tied to rapidly fluctuating emotions? Mindless repetition and a propensity for Sisyphean labor? Or perhaps it was physical –the inability to feel pain coupled with senseless risk-taking? But that was using the concept in the definition, and described half of Asgard besides. Perhaps it was a combination thereof, too varied and multi-faceted to be pinned down so that even the decriers relied on the rhetoric of I know it when I see it. _Had_ they seen it, then?

 _They called me mad._

He had fallen. Plummeting downward and upward because space has no direction. It had been down from the Bifrost, but that was long gone away, and there was nothing after it but distant worlds, never changing in their appearance, only blurring together at the fringes of his vision. It felt like down.

Internal raging turned philosophical at some point just before sleep, and upon waking he realized he was deep in conversation with himself, floating from nothing towards nothing and struggling, stupidly, with the sense of a word that had no meaning where he was bound in any case. 

_There are no words here, Castaway Prince._

Indeed there were not, and perhaps it was his willingness to cling to them, his _hunger_ for them, that rendered him mad. It was a search for Something among Nothing—and it was the Nothing that bore madness. Words were a counterweight to sensation, and among the Chitauri that is _all_ there was. Everything came to him through touch, and most of it was pain, a wide spectrum of it that comprised a language all its own. Living with that—existing thusly, for a stretch of time that he could not measure but seemed eons—he wove clever strings of words, tapestries, and spoke to his hosts when they would listen, and to himself when they would not. There was no need to speak _aloud_. They could hear him if he chose not to move his lips, and often he was still for days, surrounded by the icy rock of an unguarded prison. To where would he flee? When they asked this, he felt that they were laughing. Knowing. 

Asgard would not have him back, and neither would his pride permit it. Loki walked miles along the open stretch of a barren planet, thinking even Jotunheim was beautiful, when held up against this. His fine armor fell away, worn to rust and shreds by the harsh atmosphere, and the Chitauri gave him their own dark fabric, the skin of beasts like Nidhogg, black and sleek and resistant to the tearing pull of wind and the withering effect of a mineral-laden environment. His nails and hair grew, curled at the edges, and the smooth, boyish lines of his face and form sharpened and strained, corded lightly with muscle and streaked, where they touched him, with scars. Only Odin’s illusion remained, his Aesir skin that glowed even more brightly with no light to burnish the surface, cloaking the cerulean tint below. 

He no longer felt himself, but being uncertain of just who that was, he supposed it mattered little. Under their watch—one could hardly say care—he recuperated. They told him many times what they wanted, what they believed he could do that they could not, and many times in return he listened—felt—their insistence. How they were privy to what he once thought only Heimdall could see was impossible to discover, but their eyes roamed the galaxies, and what they showed to him was what amounted to a splash of foam from a sea. Midgard mattered nothing to them; it was the Tesseract, a trinket that housed the energy of worlds, which they sought, and it was he they wished to send as herald and thief ( _conqueror_ ) to fetch it. 

Thinking on it now, he loathed his own weakness, falling for the same ruse he himself had used countless times in the past. That was the value of deception that relied on covetousness; it was the sort that was strong enough, even when foreknown, to lure a man into almost anything. So long as he _wanted_. And Loki did. 

They presented him with a spectacularly gripping tableau. Midgard on its knees, and very easily; those mortals were useless as an army, but as a prize, invaluable. They were under Thor’s protection, and that alone made them worth conquering. His hosts seemed to know that as they pressed the image into his mind, setting it through the backs of his eyelids so that even with closed eyes, it gleamed bright with the light of the Midgardian sun.

_The cities they had built, mountains they had smoothed and rivers they had split, all broken and burning, and then thrust at once back together, cleanly, so that arching towers scraped the sky. Everything yielded to his hand, and he might destroy and remake their world at will, alleviating them of the burden of loyalty, of choice, by making their very existence obligatory, and dependent upon him._

_Wars halted with the screech of rusting machinery and abandoned weaponry, the fire-producing iron that had replaced glinting bronze at some point in their short histories fell apart. Ivy grew out over abandoned citadels and consumed the rotting metal of their war machines, dragging back down and into the earth that which the fires had not purged. Sand entombed forts in towering dunes and trees sprouted up and through armories, breaking the granite walls with massive roots. The cities that rose were finer than Asgard’s; their technology was paramount and could compete, indeed, with magic, if it might be turned away from war. Now when they cried out to their benefactor he would hear them, respond, and they would love him best, a far superior king to the last, who had let them glut on one another’s blood under the ideology of individual will, knowing full well that they were incapable of survival by their own volition._

Yes, he wanted that. But did they know…?

They did. They showed him.

 _They brought her to him, a man with scrap of leather covering one eye and another, younger, dressed in dark clothes and darker expression. She was rather fair, like Vanir, and when they forced her to her knees she struggled before him, looking something like Sif in comportment, though weaker, more fragile. Sif would not have cried, but he was only too pleased to see that_ she _did._

Loki felt himself leaning into the vision as though it hung before him like a painting rather than playing just between his eyes and mind, interacting with all of his senses and obscuring reality. 

_Her scream, shrill and piercing, halted abruptly with the knife, and it cut cleanly through a layer of flesh no thicker than silk, spilling a vermillion libation out at his feet._

He drew back from it, and the image faded, flickering out and then crumpling like parchment. Blood thrummed beneath his skin and prickled the frayed edges of his nerves; he was still able to feel the hilt of the weapon in his palm, the slick smear of red that turned sticky as it dried. They knew very well what to promise him, what he would believe, and that is why it stopped where it did, an offer devoid of embellishment. They couldn’t give him _everything_. Sharp green eyes fell shut in consideration, and his hosts left him to it, knowing perhaps better than he did that in the end it was the only viable option, and he would take it. 

\-----------------

 

_Loki. Are you there?_

_I am nowhere._

That was another infuriating aspect of exile. Although he dwelled in a world of Nothing, awaiting a temporal ultimatum and his eventual capitulation to their plans, he still dreamed. Because there was no time, at least not in the traditional sense, his dreams were often long and tangled, the result of ages of sleep and a turbulent conscience. They were never the disjoint series of images that he had grown up with, fragments of the day and nonsense scenes blending one right into the other; they seemed more like waking dreams, active endeavors of his subconscious to pry open the lid on memories and thrust them before his gaze, as vivid and all-encompassing as the Chitauri’s depiction of his conquest. 

It struck him while dreaming that his hosts were not as omniscient as their ruses would indicate; indeed it had been his assumption, and they had never made such claims themselves. What they had known came not from some all-seeing source, but from Loki himself. They stripped the thoughts from the surface of his waking mind, reading desire as though he radiated it like miasma, as if the thirst for subjugation and victory _some_ where, over _some_ one, was scrawled on the inside of his skull. It had been all that had circled through his thoughts when he fell, and even after he landed in a broken heap, nursed for weeks (months?), it preyed on his awareness. Perhaps he had even spoken of it; there was a time, in the silence, when all he could do was speak, shouting words into unending darkness and hearing nothing back. 

But what he dreamed, they did not know. They were clever. Perhaps cleverer than he, and they would have used it against him.  
Images of Asgard, of Aesir, of _Thor_ had filtered in through the cracks since he heard the shudder of the ground beneath his back when he finally landed, felt everything in him come loose and fly outward, visceral shrapnel, along the paths of the fractures in the planet’s surface. His breath had been the first thing to return, and with it a shocking pain that rattled the length of him as each sense came skittering back among the debris, burrowing into him painfully. The smell of dust and blood, the ferric damp smearing his teeth, and that winded heaving, like boar running the last desperate length of a spear. It shattered him, and in that broken moment his defenses faltered, and it was enough. Through a fissure in some mental citadel, Thor slipped in, dominating that territory as readily as every other, and Loki fought unto exhaustion to force him out. 

But he had had to sleep. 

When he did, Asgard flooded in, a wash of light and white marble and the pull of a cool wind. He found himself lying in the open hall of the palace stoa, sunlight slanting in shafts past the fluted columns and forming a soft chryselephantine latticework along the floors. He rested in the center of an elaborate starburst inlaid among the marble at one end, the space circular and surrounded by steps that gave out into the gardens where Yggdrasil was kept. Where his cheek pressed, the stone was smooth and chill, and overhead the domed ceiling was tiled in aqua-hued lapis like an inverted fountain, trapping the breezes and milder temperature. The wild scent of spring and wide-blossomed peonies floated through, and stray petals tumbled loosely over white steps. He knew the year; the gardeners had planted those only once, because of the ants they drew. Thor was sixteen, and he was just turned thirteen, legs impossibly long, elegant, but less than useless in the palaestra. Loki was stretching them out lazily over the patterned floor and blinking up at the pleasing hue of the ceiling when the floor vibrated, echoing with footsteps. Soon the walls and dome followed suite, reverberating with the tenor of a familiar laugh.

“Why Loki, you look blue with chill.”

He turned to look at him, gaze upside down, and his mind inverted the image. Thor had taken to growing his hair out but was still impatient with it, knotting back thick thatches of blond in a messy leather thong. He had come from exercise, damp with sweat and wearing little more than a matted emerald tunic that Loki suspected was borrowed from his own drawers. 

“And you green with envy, but I’m hardly surprised. Is that my hauberk?”

Thor snickered and sat down beside his head, folding his legs and giving dark hair a playful tug. “Mother always said you ought to learn to share better.”

“I would happily have shared it,” he said with a sniff, “but to share requires _asking_ , brother.”

“I’ll have to remember that for later.”

“Who, exactly, is the eldest between us?” Loki snorted in mock disdain, knowing Thor could hardly bear it when he acted beyond his years, irritated because it was always he, not his younger brother, who suffered scoldings for immaturity. 

“There is,” Thor said with affected gravitas, “only one way to determine this.”

“You know you no longer have a foot on me,” Loki groaned in annoyance, turning over to press his cheek into his arm, finding a chillier place on the tile. “And I very much doubt--”

“The oldest will always be able to upend the youngest,” Thor said with equal seriousness, so much so that Loki, hardly paying him any heed, was unprepared by his tone and startled when strong arms slipped beneath him and dragged him up in a sloppy heft. 

“Thor!” Immediately he attempted to rise, but having been too quickly drawn up and to his chest, he succeeded only in striking his foot on one of the pillars and smacking Thor hard on the back of the head, fingers getting tangled in his hair. 

“Let me down this instant!” All pretensions of maturity aside, he wriggled uselessly in his hold, feeling the harsh grip of hands and the dig of his wrist bones as they struggled.

“I’m clearly still older.” Thor observed, eyebrows raised, young face greatly pleased. 

“You’re ancient,” Loki indulged, writhing to no avail as his brother stumbled down the shallow steps and into the grass of the garden, nearly toppling when his foot flailed out again, sending a wave of petals down from a rosebush with a yelp of pain.  
“And wiser.” He carried him further, and Loki snorted.

“Do you have _any_ self awareness?”

“I have pl--” A yank to his hair brought him down hard, and they tumbled, Thor landing heavily atop him, hair spilling free of its knot and over into Loki’s face. He blew the strands away with a groan. 

“You’re crushing me, you brute. Get off.”

“Why do you not come to the palaestra anymore to spar? It’s always with your books that I find you.” He sat halfway up, straddling Loki’s hips as though pinning him for the win on the training ground. Leaning forward, he caught either wrist in his hands and held them over a head of dark hair with a small smile, gently, so that Loki knew he could wriggle away whenever he liked. 

“Yes someone has to cover for you in class when you stumble through the beginning of every edda.”

“You could do that in your sleep. You need no extra studying.”

“Did it occur to you that I might enjoy it?”

The look on his face said that it did not, and his shoulders slumped slightly in a half-shrug of concession. “Fair enough. But could you not come, every now and again? The others inquire after you.”

“Your friends have no want of me except when they need someone to pin.” Loki said stiffly. 

“Not so! And you’re very fine with a bow,” Thor encouraged. 

“An archer!” Loki scowled, “No king is an archer.” He wriggled free of Thor’s hands, sitting up halfway with his weight balanced in his elbows, almost level with his brother’s gaze. 

“There are other ways to fight, I think,” he said quietly. At that time he had only begun to contemplate using optical illusion, feints and ruses, to outwit the enemies he could not bring down by strength alone. As the others outstripped his growth in everything but height, it was becoming an increasingly appealing option. He had only wondered if he ought to tell Thor, and then just how to phrase it, that his brother did not think him weak and conniving, but persisted in seeing his innovation as a mark of intelligence. At that time, Loki had never questioned that Thor’s opinion was of paramount importance to him. 

Under the lure of Loki’s purposeful vagary, Thor leaned forward against his thighs to meet the intensity of his eyes. “How so?”  
And just as he asked, a pink flush stole across the bronzed arches of his cheekbones, and at once he was off, tumbling clear of him. 

“Where are you going!” Loki protested irritably, watching him dart off with a strange sort of elegance. 

“Tell me later! Tell me at practice tomorrow morning,” Thor shouted back, disappearing entirely around the curve of the tholos-shaped porch, leaving Loki sprawled once again in the comfort of the breeze. A tattered peony blossom, pink as raw skin, alighted on his cheek, and the wind nudged it over the seam of his mouth. With an indignant huff, he blew it off, and the brush of the petal felt like a kiss.

\---------------------------

 

 _You were always dear to me_. It was for just that reason that he was capable of such intense hatred After. Loki closed his eyes and felt the press of grey gravel beneath his cheek this time, the grit digging jaggedly into his shoulders and back, no longer the smooth marble of Asgard’s halls or the damp grass of its courtyards. All the fields in the unnamed land the Chitauri occupied were the same, barren and rock-strewn, dotted with icy lakes to rival the temperatures in Niflheim. He wondered if it was the contrast that brought about the memories when he slept, the longing for the sort of comforts that made a person weak. But if dwelling here was to make him stronger, why did he find himself unmanned persistently by his subconscious?

_But there is nothing there, now._

When they spoke, which was not often, they forced their psyches upon him, implanting their perceptions into his senses so that his body responded immediately, hearing, smelling, tasting whatever it was they wished him to. Usually it was mild, an explication of their plans, their purpose, only inasmuch as it was necessary for him, as their agent, to understand. Sometimes it was pain, to remind him of the difference between whom they considered king and conqueror, and who was _in charge_. They made it clear once, and Loki never forgot, writhing on his bed of skins for hours and screaming into a vortex, his sound swallowed before it left his lips, as the muscle of his viscera coiled slowly, contracting upon itself and bringing great ridges to the surface of his skin. When it did stop, he slept for days and dreamed of nothing. And when he woke, they were there again, and seemed to say, “Now you understand the difference between kingship and power. We will tell you what we require of you.”

At first in came in glimpses, images of Midgard, a land almost as foreign to him as theirs once was, although Thor was its nominal protector. _This is how you will find it_ , the images said to him, _and this is how you will take it_.

What he did after, they implied, mattered nothing to them, and this made Loki smile. _Yes, we shall get on well_.

Their conversation proved draining, the way mental communication almost always was, and afterwards he would lie still for hours, watching dark day fade into darker night. They were far from the sun, there. 

Looking up, where once there had been a wash of teal tile and ornate, hand-worked molding, there was only darkness, thousands of pinpoints of unattainable light. A hand reached out to scrape them, the ivory spindles of his fingers streaking across an inky expanse, and he remembered briefly having done that once before, from the open balcony of his chamber after a storm, and the hand that had once grasped his, kissing the smooth arch of his palm with quiet reverence. 

_It wasn’t always reverent._

\----------------------

 

It didn’t surprise him when he dreamed of it that night, Thor’s feast day in his twenty-sixth year, not so long ago. The hall was lined with flat board tables polished to a shine and run with white linen, Frigga’s and her handmaidens’ work, held in place by ornate jewel tone cloisonné dishes filled gradually from the kitchen with heated pastries and rolls. The fluted columns were strung thickly with heavy scented garlands from the orchard, and even the mead was spiced for the occasion. The floors were littered with sweet-smelling rushes and grated herbs that kicked up a pungent perfume when crushed underfoot. Within an hour the great majority of participants were pleasantly drunk, and Loki surmised privately that more than half of Thor’s table would be leaving the hall feet first the next morning, if at all. He scoffed internally and made the level of his drink appear to decrease almost in time with the others, refilling it every now and again with a twitch of his wrist to prevent suspicion. Thor only looked crookedly at him once, as if knowing, and then left it alone. 

Fandral, being perhaps the lightest, was the first to slip under the proverbial table, though his candor and crude wit made him appear more sober than he was. Hogun behaved with his usual temperance, Sif with moderation befitting a gentleman but perhaps not a lady, and Volstagg’s stony demeanor and strong arm propped him up in a sufficiently persuasive demeanor. The usual jokes were tossed about, becoming simultaneously more randy and convoluted as the night wore on, although rapid gesticulation covered for slurred speech.

There were women there, not his mother’s attendants but younger maidens of lower houses whose invitations, however they arrived, were subtle but generally only with one purpose. Loki made it a practice to avoid them, and it was not as though, with his standing, their presence was entirely unknown to him. He had come to realize that they did not bother him with their company, and even Fandral’s overt displays of affection, if one could call it that, did little more than irk him. It was the women who fawned over Thor that incurred his agitation most frequently; they were openly importunate, perhaps thinking his favor would secure their father or brother better standing. Those were the less than veiled implications Loki usually tore out of the pretty speeches they dealt him. 

That evening, though, there were few such speeches, and a great deal of communication passed physically and, to judge by his brother’s increasingly interested expression, beneath the table. His arm twitched, and the maiden, the wreath of myrtle in her hair hanging askew, squeaked, half-leaping from the chair before settling again and leaning into him with the imbalance of one who was clearly unused to good wine. 

He was not sure who did it, perhaps Fandral, perhaps Hogun, who had been giving him strange looks from down the table most of the evening, but she came too boldly to be of her own bidding. The woman slid onto the bench near him, occupying the recently-vacated position of Sif, who had sniffed at their idiocy and departed with better timing than Loki. She was beautiful, as they all were, and her hair hung in a dark auburn tumble, mostly freed of its glittering silver pins. Greeting him in sotto voice, the goblet placed before him proved little more than a prop, and when she made banal conversation about the feast above the table, her hand spoke more directly below. Fingertips grazed his knee only briefly before sliding up, and his own wrapped swiftly about her wrist, perhaps too roughly, and thrust it back, prompting a shocked little inhalation and then, as if she had the right to it, an indignant huff. Already the girl was skittering away, gauzy skirts whipping about in her haste to depart.

“Loki,” he heard his brother’s chiding voice at once, a baffled frown on his face, “You mustn’t put the ladies to shame.”

“They hardly need my help.” 

“I think you could use some of theirs!” Fandral rebutted promptly, provoking raucous laughter from those of their circle.  
Thor had turned to the woman at his side, righting her festal wreath and making some small comment about her necklace, a heavy green pendant that dipped as far as her bosom, and Loki resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He rose abruptly to go, wishing then he had had Sif’s foresight, already eyeing the garland-strewn entryway where the rushes were rucked up from many stumbling feet. 

“Oh come, Loki—be a better sport about it,” Thor spoke up again, although this time a sincere sort of concern creased his brows, no longer reproaching him even in jest. 

Seeing opportunity, Fandral seized upon it. “Thor, you know well your little brother has no time for women’s things,” he said with feigned sensibility, “when he spends all his time playing with _swords_.” 

Loki prickled at once, feeling a hot flush rise unbidden to sting the underside of his skin at a mixture of laughter and reserved, discomfited shifting. No one was drunk enough to miss his meaning, but it would have been much easier if they had all taken it as a bit of foolishness and chortled over his unease. Instead there were wary glances exchanged, so he donned a humorless smile, false politesse. 

“Yes,” he acknowledged simply, startling the man to his right, who sputtered through a mouthful of mead. “With the result that I am rather skilled with a blade, while reports echo only your flagging endurance and poor marksmanship.” 

The sharp retort brought a round of heartier laughter. Responding, however acerbically, to Fandral’s cruel wit was always better received than allowing oneself to be touched by it. Loki took the break in conversation to make a quiet departure, not missing the sharp glare tossed his way from across the table, and Thor’s own curiosity, which melted away shortly enough when a garland was thrust atop his head. Loki heard laughter ricochet off of the high beams and domed ceiling, and then the winding corridor smothered their sounds. 

He went to bed but did not sleep, long legs stretched out over the smooth coverlet and bent at the knee, one arm below his head in thought. He drifted, but found himself startled awake by the clanging of metal in the hall, the sound armor made when it dropped to the floor or struck a door. Peering out with an unamused expression, fully expecting to find a stumbling Thor en route back to his chambers, he blinked in the comparatively bright light of the torches. It was his brother, and the scraping metal was the sound of his greaves having nudged the table edge with movement. He was leaning forward into the wall, back facing Loki, and between him and the limestone, the maiden with the myrtle wreath, her fingers threading through his hair while she made pleasant noises. Loki stared for what felt a long moment, but was no more than it took him to blink twice. Thor’s hand slid between their bodies, the woman sighed, and Loki slammed the door. 

If they heard, he didn’t know it, and he passed a long stretch of time beneath the sky, preferring the wide ridge of the balcony’s railing and the sheer plummet inches to one side, polished marble to the other, to the space of his bed. Although he felt himself suddenly, inescapably exhausted, sleep lingered at the edges of his conscious, dodging his grasp. He wished he hadn’t opened the door to investigate—it would have been that lout’s luck if he had fallen down drunk, and why should Loki play his keeper? 

All the same, the idea of not having known, of having slept ten feet from… _that_ …was equally perturbing. It shouldn’t have been; it was hardly novel. There was surely not a niche in the entire palace that had not seen some sort of fumbling midnight tryst before, and many of them Thor’s. It was not as though he had not _known_ ; he had simply never seen.

His mind returned, uninvited, to Thor’s hands, seeing them flat on the wall, and then disappearing into shadow between them. Thor was not gentle or delicate in anything; Loki knew his hands well enough from the training yard; he had been thrown, struck, and pinned more times than he could count; they were calloused and frighteningly strong, agile with a sword and dexterous enough with a bow. But it struck him that he did not know how they _felt_. And he did not know why he should, or why it should matter. 

_Why does it?_

Holding up his own hand to the dark of the sky, he swiped it past the stars to the tumble of clouds gathering on the horizon, thinking for no reason at all and with great pleasure of how the woman would wake the next morning to find the bed empty, no sign of the prince’s presence. He would send something the next day, some small gift such as women like, and she would never see him again save perhaps in passing, when nothing but a bow of her head would be permitted. He smiled.

It had come on so gradually that he hardly noticed it, lingering in an unacknowledged realm of his mind. When he forced himself to confront it, think the words, if not speak them aloud, they unnerved him. It was not some residual curiosity, but an express wish. He wanted to know how his hands felt. How the beard he could never grow, when Thor’s came in so quickly in wheat-colored bristles—he wondered how _that_ felt, and if it was why women laughed or purred when he kissed them. 

The thought brought on a pleasant flush, and he indulged himself in it with the privacy afforded him by the altitude of his perch and the dark of the night and his clothes. It would be easy enough to scatter the images, shatter the thought like a reflection in water, sent to pieces by a flick of the wrist. He did that often, but that night he let them linger, and the damp tongue of heat laved at his skin so that the press of stone beneath his cheek stung with cold. 

The clouds in the distance unraveled, sprawling as indolently as he across the sky, obscuring the stars and then tearing open in a deluge of frigid rain. Loki lay beneath it, closing his eyes to the grumble of thunder on the horizon, and thought how much he liked the sound, how it ran in lazy reverberations just beneath his skin, raking abused nerves backward and forward, making the hairs on his arms and neck prickle pleasantly. He thought sharing his bed might like that, a fierce give and take between hot and cold, the electric energy of a storm compacted by great strength. And when he would begin to consider _that_ , he would know it was too far, and reaching out would obliterate the image, striking the smooth surface of thought into broken fragments to dust away into corners, always marveling at how, of everyone, it was easiest to lie to oneself. 

When he woke, he was almost taken aback to find himself dry, smelling not of the summer rain, but the powdered dust of a dead land and now only very faintly of mint and earth. I am losing myself, he thought, one slender hand folded atop his chest, plucking at the fraying garb there.

 _Perhaps that is best._

\----------------------------

 

They could give him nothing by way of ability, but what they could _teach_ seemed unending. They showed him only what he would need, but that was enough. By the end of his recovery, he was able to summon what he wished with a thought. His dark armor and the brilliantly plated bronze gleamed dully in the shadows. The heavy pendant at his throat, meant to evoke a gorget, rested comfortably on his chest, and folds of supple leather encased his skin. His daggers, the sleek stilettos that were easily concealed within the flimsiest of fabrics, gave him a sense of himself. 

He thought that a great power, and then they showed him what the Tesseract could do, and it seemed no more than a very fine trick. 

That tiny gem was a world-breaker, and they had fashioned a weapon to house it, offering him its use in return for their eventual possession of it. Lest he consider keeping it for himself, they reminded him that his survival was dependent upon compliance. Loki twitched beneath their thumb, but the bright pulse of pain behind his eyes reminded him of their attachment, and a flood of images, both memory and contemplation, spilled out into their hands, unmade and then refashioned, tearing him inside out and warping what little remained precious, reminding him. 

_What we have shown you is nothing. You don’t_ know _pain._

He did not ask to see it, and tempered royal arrogance with restraint. He did not want their treasure; he wanted Thor’s. 

 

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same warnings folks. Also that bit about contemplation drunk and sober has been shamelessly stolen from an old Persian proverb, just as my title is shamelessly stolen from Epictetus' "On Courage."

_You are more distant than usual, brother._

It sounded so real that he remembered the ringing clarity of that baritone long after he had awoken. It was of course only mnemonic shrapnel, a fragment of the memories he would turn in his hands like an untumbled stone, smoothing and searching, and then shatter against the wall in disgust. 

“Perhaps you mistake contemplation for detachment,” Loki mused, his eyes not parting from the text in his lap as his brother sank to his knees in the grass beside him. They sat near the Yggdrasil, a portal between worlds, and its pulsing energy glowed against the white of the pages. 

“No,” Thor persisted with utmost sincerity, “You are always in contemplation, but you can generally spare a glance.”

Loki looked up pointedly from the top of the tome, settling sharp eyes on Thor’s for a prolonged moment until the prince looked off in discomfort.

“That is not what I meant. You are more withdrawn than is your custom. Is it--”

“No,” Loki interrupted, knowing what he would suggest. He had been crowned in all but ceremony; the date had been set for a fortnight, and the Allfather had made the announcement to them both in private. It came as no great shock; Loki knew well where he stood among the nobility of the court. Thor was a young Odin, and he was his shadow, a shifting mélange of forms with a silver tongue. He was not disliked, but neither was he a king. 

He had told Thor he was not sore about it a hundred times if he had told him once, but what else was a man to say, who wanted to bow out with some vestige of dignity intact? He had had ambitions too; was his disappointment not warranted? It was that churning uncertainty that bordered on envy which knotted his own stomach, thinking each time he passed the closed doors of the great hall how one day he would fling them open to find Thor there, instead of their father, and he would bow to him. Were these nothing more than the remnants of their ardent childhood rivalry, or would he find himself incapable? 

Thor swallowed audibly, moving from his knee to fold his legs more comfortably, sitting down hard at his side. It was evident that he wanted badly to console him, but knew it would come across only as patronizing, and Loki would revile him for it. 

“What are you reading?”

Loki’s brow twitched in a combination of annoyance and amusement. “If I were to explain it, how long would you listen before your thoughts turned to the hunt?”

He grinned then almost bashfully, a handsome expression that had no doubt endeared him to their father’s contemporaries. He was young yet, but he would do very well, Loki thought. Something rippled internally; he realized, _but he will stumble a great deal at first_. And Loki smiled. Thor thought he was returning a friendly gesture, and clasped his shoulder.   
“Come with us,” he entreated. “We need a spotter.”

“And an archer, I suppose,” he answered with self-deprecating irony, meaning it more a barb against the offer than himself.  
“You willfully misunderstand me!” Thor grumbled at him in frustration, “You know your eyes are the sharpest of any, and the first cast is yours; you have only to ask. Fandral and Hogun have already offered to hold the net. Volstagg will…leer at it,” he added in an attempt at humor. 

“Spare me your indulgences.”

“There is simply no pleasing you!” Thor exhaled heavily, shaking his head, “You never join us anymore, and half the time I cannot even find you in the palace. We were a fine team, hunting boar before. I don’t know what has turned your favor against it, but I know it is not the mess of the thing. I saw your work after the last incursion.” 

Loki sensed he wanted badly to discuss _that_ , too, and turned him easily from it, closing the text and the conversation and standing with grace. “Bring me a token then,” he said dismissively, tucking worn leather beneath his arm. 

Thor opened his mouth and closed it, giving up at sincere conversation with a huff. “I will.”

\--------

 

He did. The party remained gone for almost two weeks, tracking boar and bear in the mountains and likely producing enough noise to chase off every trace of ornithological life within a five stade radius. When they returned in the evening, it was to the summer celebration and a feasting on the spoils of the hunt. Loki participated and spouted the usual pleasantries as were required of him. At the end of it, Odin made the coronation announcement public, raising his jewel-studded goblet, the spoils of a raid into Jotunheim long before either Loki or Thor had been born, in toast. A number of nobles, and then Thor’s own friends, made brief and pithy speeches, respectively, and before the room could fall to strident conversation again, Loki raised his own. He could _feel_ Fandral’s brows lifting in irony, and then the beaming pleasure of Frigga’s smile, the hands at the arms of her chair clasping comfortably in her lap. No one had expected it from him. 

“They say” he began, “that it is the counsel of kings to consider every weighty matter twice, first drunk, and then sober, and then discern whether or not they agree. I can scarcely affect surprise at our father’s decision, considering your proficiency in this.” 

There was a belt of laughter that rippled along the table, and he saw Thor’s mouth twitch upward beneath the thicker growth of beard that had sprouted during his absence. Several hands hammered the planking and then fell quiet again, expecting him to continue. 

“It will be, I imagine, the most trying transition of your life. To say anything otherwise would be to cheapen it,” Loki spoke with level gravitas, sharp gaze scanning a momentarily captive audience briefly before letting his eyes alight on Thor.

“But I can think of no one better to shoulder the weight of a people’s well-being in exchange for his own, no one whom I would prefer to see bear the great burden of true autonomy.” The rest were politely silent, shuffling feet or cloth-covered arms on occasion, but he saw understanding light up behind his brother’s calm façade. There was recognition that Loki’s words were less toast than warning, a reminder that the crown was a decorative emblem; kingship was a binding obligation. 

Loki raised his goblet and held it forth, and fifty more followed throughout the room, Odin’s own gleaming in the dying evening light. “May the best of fortunes be yours, brother,” he toasted, lilting voice carrying smoothly through the hall, but softly, “As I am certain it will.”

Acclamation came through the hammering of open palms on the worn tabletops, spilling a few drinks and provoking a number of reciprocal cries, affirming Loki’s wishes, but without the twisted irony that those who knew him well would have seen. 

Loki stayed while the spoils of the hunt were carved and mead was passed about it great quantities; servants lit the torches and spilled sweet incense over burners, covering the bloody smell of the meat, or mingling with it. 

Nobles approached him, and companions of Thor’s, members of the Guard, either inquiring about the hunt—they did not seem to realize he had not attended—or complimenting him, with some degree of surprise, on his toast. Even those who looked well upon him recognized a degree of animosity, though surely nothing more than a healthy sibling rivalry, between them, and most, Odin especially, seemed pleased by Loki’s elegant concession. It had hardly even seemed one. 

Their assurances that he would undoubtedly give his brother the finest counsel were met with still, falsely pleased responses; inside it chafed, playing runner up. _Fine counsel indeed, when his idea of foreign policy amounts to midnight raids on an enemy’s women and armory_. Bearing it with proper spirit, he noticed Thor had tempered his drinking, too busy accepting the well-wishes of every man and maiden in the room; the latter lingered longer. _Entrenching themselves at the first viable opportunity. Let no one say they are not ambitious._

When night rose in full, snuffing out the last light at the horizon, he slipped out, heavy cloak dusting the sagging garlands so that they rustled and sent up a heady perfume that clung to the fabric even after a swift walk through the corridor. It was too early for sleep, and he, too restless. A pair of grand doors topped with stained glass above the lintel gave onto a wide balcony that oversaw the inner courtyard and the flood of night-blooming flowers that hugged the base of Yggdrasil. With the feast hall packed with guests and occupying all available servants, the living quarters were pleasantly deserted; Loki left the doors open a snitch so that dim light from the interior trickled out onto the pearly stone of the terrace, providing the dimmest illumination by which to step. 

One hand swept the wide banister, cool to the touch in the night air and damp already from a brief spat of rain. Watching his knuckles whiten in a firm grip, the wind picked up and nudged the door shut, plunging the hemisphere of the stony outcropping into darkness. Very faintly, the sound of the celebration filtered past the trees below and up into the bubble of silence. They were toasting in jest now, and playing some sort of game. 

It won’t be right away, but it will be soon enough, Loki mused to himself, worrying on some distant level that he might have left too early; the last thing he wanted was to present them with reason to think him slighted or bitter. In point of fact, that was hardly the whole of it. A small part of him, at the time, had been distinctly proud. 

_He will be king, and I will serve as his counsel. At first he will be clumsy, but Thor is not a fool; he will learn quickly, as necessity demands._

How long, then, until he had no need of his brother’s guidance? 

“I thought I might find you here.” Light flooded the space in time with his voice, disappearing as he closed the door gently after him, meeting Loki at the outcropping and leaning halfway over it while his brother stood straight. 

“You thought well then,” Loki agreed blandly, flicking a glance at him. “Retiring before midnight, and during your own celebration?” Eyebrows arched, and he received a self-conscious smile in return. 

“Not retiring. I was unable to speak to you, or so much as cross the room…” He gave a half shrug and straightened at once, “I wanted to thank you. It was a kind toast, brother.”

Loki brushed it off; it was hardly a fine piece of rhetoric, and no one liked to be kept from their drink with lengthy pontification. “You had no shortage of them; you might be missing some now,” he pointed out with a glance to the distant glow, dimly visible from where they stood a story higher.

Thor gave a half shrug, “Maybe, but none that would matter to me as much as yours. I feared you would be,” he winced pronouncing the word, as if realizing belatedly he should not have brought the subject up at all, “—sore.” 

Loki snorted in amusement, a razor thin smile plucking at his lips. “Have more faith in me than that.”

“I do,” Thor spoke with sudden sincerity, blue eyes darker, wider. “I only know that I should like—very much—to have you…”

Loki’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing gradually as Thor parsed his thoughts. 

“To have you at my side,” he said dully, shaking his head, displeased at the simplification. “Your well-wishing meant a great deal, but your admonition, too. No one knows me as you do.” He did not mean it contemptuously, and did not offer in hasty desire to patch Loki’s pride; indeed he made clear his belief that it was undamaged. What had initially sounded like the victor’s good sportsmanship toward the loser quickly took on the air of a genuine request. 

There was a heavy pause, and Thor broke it abruptly with a rustle of his cloak, “Oh, and this.” Offering forth a finely polished stiletto set into a curved ivory base, he grinned, “As per your request.”

 _Bring me back a token then._

Loki accepted it, finding the clean-cut grooves in the base, upon closer inspection, were scrimshaw, and beautifully cut. It was a mountain template, carved with precision, and small goats, denoted by their backward curving horns, dotted the hillsides. There were few enough artists on Asgard with that skill, and Thor must have had it sent back in advance that it might be prepared in time. 

“It was the first boar we came across—magnificent tusks,” Thor held his hands apart in demonstration of their length, and Loki did not think he was exaggerating. 

Loki accepted it, pleased with the weight and heft; it fit the curve of his long fingers nicely. He slipped it into a hidden panel of his cloak, and it had remained there, on his person always, up until the day he tumbled from the bridge’s edge. 

“Thank you.” 

Thor nodded, still standing close after the exchange; Loki remembered as distinctly as anything the musk of incense on his clothes and the silage-scent of his hair. “You never answered,” Thor pointed out, watching Loki tuck the blade away beneath his cloak, clearly trying to trace the whereabouts of the fold’s opening.

“Answered?” Loki echoed, “You never _asked_.” At the expression of blatant bafflement, the younger of the two shook his head with annoyance. “Already a king. You only told me what you would like. You made no _request_ of me.”

He almost blushed upon realizing, and Loki turned to face the overhang, eyes on the distant glow of the great hall’s windows as Thor shuffled. “So I didn’t. But,” he stepped forth and drew a hand gently over the stray ebony curling atop Loki’s ear, tracing it down to where he might cup the side of his neck, forcing his gaze back. “Would you? Remain here, even after I am king?”

Loki turned into his cupped hand and then, not liking the manipulative quality of the gesture, drew his arm down. “Where did you think I would go, to voluntary exile in Jotunheim?”

Thor smiled with one corner of his mouth, “You were always fond of the snow.”

There was the echo of a distant crash, and both looked up, tracing the sound back to the celebration. Loki turned to the wide twin doors, no longer propped open and pouring out light. “You should go back. I have no small doubt that is a friend of _yours_ striking down tripods.”

Thor snorted in amusement, but when he saw movement from the corner of his eye he stopped, grasping Loki’s shoulder lightly. “Don’t go. There is—something else.”

Turning, mock-patience on his face, Loki waited. 

“What I said just then, it is something like that…that I wish to avoid. For which I need you.”

Loki maintained a stern expression of indifference. “A ceiling for your arrogance, Thor?”

“No!” Frustrated, he shook his head and seemed about to move, but thought better of it, perhaps assuming Loki would take the opportunity to depart and leave him in exasperation. “Someone to temper me when I need it, who…knows me.” That it was difficult for him to express even to that extent was plain; Loki supposed it seared his pride, and it was less pleasing than it ought to have been. He wanted to scrape away his shame at needing it—Thor _ought_ to need him. 

“Fine,” Loki made a dismissive gesture, “Count on me to cut you down when you need it. No one will be surprised,” he intoned drily, shocked when a strong hand whipped him about in vexation and pushed his back hard into the limestone wall. Jaw clicking shut at the force of the motion, green eyed leveled with blue. 

“They would not expect it if you did not make such perpetual _sport_ of everybody.”

“They make themselves willing targets,” Loki growled, no longer able to disguise his own annoyance. “Now unhand me.”

“You lash out at them because you think yourself higher,” Thor accused, his grip tightening so as to leave bruises on the lean muscle of his arms. 

“I _am_ higher!” Loki bit out, meeting his creased eyes fearlessly. “You surround yourself with _children_ , Thor! These are the men you would have as your companions? Those who should advise and guide but who trail blindly after you, ever deferential? How are they to help you rule a kingdom when they cannot rule even themselves?”

That he was angry for his friends’ sake was to be expected, but his explosive reaction bypassed insults he had grown used to hearing, taken into little consideration. “That is why I need you!” The words burst forth of their own accord, and strong hands buried in his arms slackened marginally, the right slipping upward to cup his nape again, directing his gaze. “That is why I’m _asking_ you,” Thor corrected himself, leaning in with cautious breath, willing his ire to die down as Loki retreated behind a still-faced mask. “For your aid. Your support.”

Recognizing what it cost him even to ask, Loki’s chest rose gradually in breath, letting him wait. _For how long will you need me? And what after?_ Exhaling slowly, he realized his brother stood quite close, and that he could smell the honeyed drink of the evening on him. Some part of him had assumed Thor would just _know._ “You have it, then.”

The return smile was genuine, relief and some degree of embarrassment, but more of the former than the latter. “And you will always have mine,” he returned, suddenly all propriety, gripping Loki’s forearm almost formally and filling out the full width of his cloak’s shoulders very nicely. The transformation, from brother to prince, was immediate and perhaps unconscious, and Loki shook his head in amusement. 

“For what, do tell, would I need your support? Do you suspect I’ll be leading the Western Army in defense?”

“Do you prefer that army?”

Loki laughed, long and hollow, shaking his head. “You cannot give away what is not yours.”

“It will be mine.” Thor reminded him bluntly, pride sprouting out again like a glint in his aura, as though to match the armor. 

“Offer it to me at that time then,” Loki said. “And perhaps, before you are burdened with kingship, you should invest your time in those liberties you are so fond of,” he punned, tossing another glance beyond the balcony only to have Thor shake his head. 

“I like it here.” Releasing him by stepping back, he returned to the balustrade, staring out over the dark of the garden, a few glowing blossoms catching the moonlight like beacons. Loki joined him, his shoulder two inches distant, and felt the heat pouring off of him despite the breeze of the evening. Thor was still fiddling with something in his mind; his expression in the midst of frustrated thought was unchanged from youth: clenched jaw—well, it was bearded now—creases about his eyes and the corners of his mouth, and his knuckles would flex, as though he expected his strength to break him free of quandary. 

Thor’s exclamation broke the quiet. “You are insufferable!”

“What?” He snapped, turning to face him in the first genuine surprise Thor must have seen in years. “ _I?_ ”

“Yes! You’re impossible to talk to!” 

“What do you think we’ve been doing these past few minutes?”

“See? One must guard against your tongue incessantly; I hesitate to speak at all in your presence without having thoroughly combed my words for error, lest you rip them to shreds.”

“ _Thinking_ before speaking is hardly reprehensible.” Loki folded his arms loosely in boredom, thigh leaning into the stone railing for support.

“You miss my point entirely in an attempt to denigrate me!”

“Well, when you make it so ea--” Loki bit off the word, shaking his head a little. “Alright. Speak, then.” He made a placating gesture with his hands that belied his mildly irritated tone. “I won’t malign you. What is it you wanted to say?”

“I--” Thor faltered, a very faint glow appearing beneath his skin, turning it the color of tarnished vermeil. “It was only that,” he tried again, “you look…very well.” He coughed, glancing at the heavy brocade cloak Loki wore draped at his shoulders. “It’s a fitting…color.”

The sudden urge rose up almost simultaneously between them. Loki found even sharp teeth clamping down on his tongue could not prevent a stutter of sound from slipping out, a broken chuckle, and Thor, throwing his head back, matched it. Loki’s face crumpled, creasing into unfamiliar laugh lines and arching his brows. The inanity seemed to be contagious, because shortly they were both forcing echoes into the stone-walled space, peals of laughter spilling out over the courtyard so that the din of the distant party was muffled entirely. 

Choking in a breath, Loki straightened his cloak, a smile still pulling hard at the corners of his lips in response to his brother’s stammering compliment. “With politesse like that,” Loki gasped out, laughter dying abruptly when he found his neck cradled in Thor’s palm again, gaze directed forward. 

“I have not seen you laugh like that in a very long time,” he rumbled, face leaning close enough that their noses brushed, his breath warm against chilled skin. Loki tried to reply; for a moment he thought he had, some nonsense excuse, and then Thor’s beard was scraping his mouth and jaw, lips pressing adamantly at his own in an insistent kiss. 

_This is--_

It was not a kiss of kinship, and if Loki stalled in its reciprocation, it was for the span of a pulse-beat and no longer. Raising a hand at once, he grazed the curved edges of his fingertips down the side of his face, guiding the embrace so that the seam of his mouth parted, receiving damp warmth amiably. That small submission seemed to indicate a greater acquiescence; suddenly Thor’s hands were smoothing through short-cropped hair and over the curves of his ears and neck, cupping his shoulders through the heavy fabric of his cloak and then gliding over the line of his back, drawing him forward so that his scent, honey and smoke, was overpowering. 

And then, there it was—he’d have thought it would be slower to emerge—that insistent pressure in the back of his head, weaker than the press of Thor’s tongue, the roving curiosity of his hands, but oppressive in its concentration.

_\--Wrong._

Thor backed him into the wall again, gently this time, and hardly paused to draw breath, pressing kisses down over him as though starving, or forgetful of whom he was with. Hands fingered the clipped fringe of his mane, and finally he nipped the ridge of his lip, suckling softly the very way Loki had seen him do with any number of the kitchen maids. He wanted. Very badly he wanted, and for a very long time. 

Thor leaned in for breath, suddenly significantly less steady on his feet than the drink had made him. His eyes were sharp, probing, and when their mouths brushed again Loki surged up onto the balls of his feet, yanking at his hair for leverage and tasting thoroughly the velvet of his mouth. A groan reverberated between them, and he was unsure of the source. 

“Loki.” They were apart, an arm’s length with Thor’s resolve. “You want this.” It had begun as a statement and devolved into an inquiry; whatever other questions might be asked— _must_ —be asked, would wait. 

“Have I been subtle?” Loki rasped, provoking a smile, a deep breath of relief.

Thor’s reply didn’t break the expression. “No.” 

 

 

The interior of his bedchamber was cool, dusted with shadows that netted together in impenetrable dark webbing at the corners. Moonlight clung to burnished furniture and the gilt implements lined upon tome-filled shelves. When the lock clicked shut, it echoed decisively, and Loki found himself lodged between the sturdy oak of the door and the equally firm pressure of Thor’s body, cheek burning into his palm as an anxious kiss dampened his mouth. 

_He wants too._

The bedding yielded as Thor bore him slowly back into it, the weight of his body a solid comfort as his hands slid haphazardly over Loki’s face and chest, openly eager and curious. Loki heard his own boot heels scrape the floor, and then Thor’s grip was on the curve of his thigh, drawing one long leg halfway up, his hips settled between both of them as though he had every right to be there. Reaching the crook of his knee, his touch stalled, breath fast and hot at Loki’s jaw, nuzzling him so that his beard scraped naked skin. 

“Tell me what I should…” Thor’s words trickled off, and he was leaning very close still; Loki could see his pulse slamming against his throat even in the dimness. “Tell me” Thor murmured, “how I might… _please_ you.” The hand on his cheek slid down, thumb tracing the angle of his jaw. Loki opened his mouth and managed no more than a single wry syllable before calloused fingertips covered it again.

“No,” Thor warned, pressing two digits firmly over the seam of his lips. “No clever retort, Loki. Sincerity,” he insisted, easing up just enough that his brother might speak. Instead, Loki nipped his middle finger, drawing the curve past his mouth in what was almost a kiss, and exhaled hotly over the skin. 

“You have it, then,” he whispered, green eyes sharp, but softened about the edges. 

 

Thor was in bed almost as he was in battle, ferociously aggressive and single-minded, skilled in what he set out upon; the sole caveat was his startling attentiveness, a carry-over, Loki was certain, from his expertise in wooing. 

He undressed him with unabashed pleasure, and Loki arched up into the touch, holding Thor’s palms down upon his chest not to stall him, but to remember. _This is how his hands feel._

That same calloused contact coursed the length of him, peeling back smooth linen and rough leather, working the intricate clasps and buckles with some impatience until lean ivory hands plucked them apart obligingly, prising back folds of fabric to the chilly air and the scathing press of a damp mouth. Loki felt himself observed and tried to still his breath, eyes falling shut in a fleeting rush of self-consciousness. Thor held himself back, _looking_ , and then twitched hard against his thigh, capitulating with a low-octave groan, as much a reflexive reaction as it was a communication of gratification. 

He was not gentle; Loki would have abused him for it later. Blunt nails raked his back, and Thor treated his throat with disproportionate attention, laving kisses and then, when Loki moaned, harsher bites over the paper-thin skin there, tasting the ferric sting of salt and blood and the undulating reverberation of a groan as it passed beneath his tongue. 

Hot, rapid breaths snaked together, and Loki surged upward to meet his mouth with a grunt of effort, finally sighing when Thor shifted the fulcrum of their balance and pressed past and through him. Thor pulsed with heat, vacillating between hesitating admiration and brutality as they tangled. Rough hands glided reverently over Loki’s skin and then, when the high, arching sound of a moan responded, they curled to dig violently into the flesh of his hips. Loki was dimly aware of the bedding scraping down his back and thighs as they moved; his heels slid uselessly against the sheets in search of leverage and then stilled, startled when a strong hand wound again through his cropped hair, kissing the long column of his neck with overt affection. Thor buried his face there while they were coupled, hot breath leaving raw skin red and damp, and then, “ _Loki_ ,” and an almost painful peak of sensation.

 

Arms slid about him afterward, soft hair clinging to his chest, a beard scraping his shoulder and neck, and then the light dusting of a blanket over too-sensitive skin. There were kisses to his jaw, his temple, the shell of his ear, and Loki turned to meet his mouth, pleased at the gliding touch over his ribs, his hip. A hand cupped his neck and their foreheads pressed close, noses brushing. It seemed difficult for him to speak, and when the words emerged they were halting ,but earnest. “You are…very dear to me. Loki.” 

If he expected reciprocation, he was disappointed. Loki did not wait to see his face, but gently disentangled himself from their embrace, separating their bodies with a gulf of cold. He presented Thor with his back in sleep, but when a strong arm slid over his waist, hand lightly stroking the soft skin of his belly, Loki left it. Sometime in the night it stormed, thunder rattling the brass fixture of the heavy lamp overhead. An angry crack of lightning sparked against the polished surface of the shade, briefly illuminating the room and presenting him, still awake, with their reflection. 

 

 

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final "chapter" if you can call it that at under 4,000 words. There is technically a sequel in the making, though it won't come about until this summer. It's at around 24,000 words now, so it looks like it might become a decent-sized fic.
> 
> Comments are appreciated! :D (please let me know if anyone is reading this @.@)

In the morning it was Thor who woke to an empty bed, and the only discarded clothing on the floor was his own. In the dining hall Loki looked upon him with comfort over breakfast, not sparing him his usual distant, amused expression. When Fandral teased his soon-to-be king about what might have him so deep in thought, Thor managed to play off distress as exhaustion, and Loki appeared as impassive as always, attracting no undue attention. He saw no reason why normalcy should not resume for both of them during the waking hours, and behaved accordingly throughout the day. He was well aware, though Thor hid it, that he was internally less composed. Loki planned to rectify that come evening. Thor had never been difficult to sway.

Diverging interests and obligations kept them apart for the day, and at dinner Thor was quiet and then cross, retiring even before Loki, much to his companions’ surprise. Loki hardly hesitated before following, and when his hands tapped the door, his brother answered still half-dressed, his cloak fallen from his shoulders and hanging in bunches about his narrow hips. He stared with the same silence that had fogged him in the hall, eyes alighting just to the right of Loki’s face, focused hard on the line of bricks in the corridor behind him.

“May I come in?” He intoned drily, one plated boot tapping the tiles impatiently. Thor thrust open the door after a pause and let it swing shut behind him. Leaning into it, clever hands found the lock and twisted it aside; the click made blue eyes sharpen irritably.

“What are you doing?” It came out like an accusation.

“Latching the door.” Loki offered, not yet deterred. When he moved to help Thor untangle the mess of fabric at his waist, he was rebuffed with a swat and sharp turn.

“Why?”

Annoyed, Loki exhaled sharply. “Privacy.”

“We have no need for that, you and I.” Thor finally found the clasps of his rucked up clothing and, rather than straightening them and shrugging free entirely of the garment, he righted it, slipping back into the sleeves and covering himself. “I don’t have the patience to speak at length. What do you need, Loki?” 

He had underestimated what remained to be done. Thor would not meet his eyes, nor indeed present him with anything but his back. “You had better find some,” he growled the advice, “it is the virtue of kings, I am told.” 

Thor grunted noncommittally, moving back to the armor on the bedding and the stained polish rag beside it; he was oiling the straps of his cuirass and polishing it for the ceremony. Drawing the heavy breastplate halfway into his lap, he ran his hands curiously over the worn material, only the fine cloth separating skin and metal, rubbing away the tarnish and smears. 

“Oh you must be occupied,” Loki said knowingly, his calm voice belying his intent as he strode forth; Thor did not look up. Tearing the hammered metal from his hands, he sent it skittering fast across the marble floor, the rivets carving up the stone while the friction of contact streaked and scratched the flat planes. The sound was awful, like nails being hammered into granite, and Loki’s hand caught his wrist before he could retaliate, leaning his entire body into the motion to contain the sweeping strength of Thor’s. 

That legendary anger of his flowed from him in ribbons of heat, tangling into the air between them and stifling his breath. Loki’s knuckles whitened, and he knew it was only Thor’s own cracking resolve that spared him from being flung about the room after the cuirass. 

“Look at me,” he bit out, and Thor finally did, but it took an effort and proved short-lived. Loki lashed out to grasp his face, forcing his gaze forward again, long fingers pinching the sides of his jaw, nails biting into the skin beneath a fine beard. He saw in his eyes what he hated. Shame, guilt. Thor was impulsive, and now he castigated himself; even when Loki could catch his stare, it went right through him. _Regret?_

Anger surged violently at the turn-around. “Is this the king?” He taunted, mouth shaping the word with hateful vitriol, “how do you plan to face your enemies in battle, when you cannot meet your own brother’s eyes? What sort of leader shows himself a coward?”

“What sort of king defiles and dishonors his brother?” Thor jerked free with surprising ease, thrusting Loki’s hands back from him as though swatting away firebrands; he rose at once to his feet and began to pace, looking like a caged lion. 

Loki remained where he was, observing without motion as though his brother really were a dangerous beast. _He is._

Fury continued to well up in him like hot tar, choking and scalding his throat with indignation at the insinuation. He fought it down without sound, still as stone where he had alighted on the edge of the bed. He observed almost without breath Thor’s riled state, thinking he really was a lion, temperamental and a hazard in his volatility. 

“What makes you think,” he hissed, hearing the click of his tongue and teeth like a blade being drawn from a sheath, “that you have such power over _me_ as to determine _my honor_?” He leaped up, and he could see that it startled Thor, who took a half step back to appraise him without really _looking_ at all, only watching for signs of danger. 

“You speak of shame,” Loki stepped briskly forward, hands curling tightly at his sides and then lashing out, slamming Thor back into the paneling of the wall with a grunt. Quickly a hand snarled in his hair near to the roots, jerking painfully. “Do you think your actions override my will? That you have the _power_ to shame me? Whence does that authority _come_ , Thor?” And viciously he slammed his head backwards, but Thor’s greater strength prevented the curve of his skull from smashing into the wall; he flung Loki forward with an anguished sound, thrusting him against the bedpost so that his spine straightened, a gasp of pain escaping. 

“Would you make even this an argument over power!” Thor demanded, his thundering tone coursing through the bed frame so that it shuddered, the carved whorls of the post digging hard into Loki’s vertebrae. “Yes I speak of shame!” He burst out, “What I have done to you--”

“Do not deny me agency!” Loki writhed in his hold, lashing out to strike his face, from which he readily recovered, although loosing his grip in the process.

Thor stared at him, touching his face lightly where a bruise would rise and fade in short time, and his anger fizzled out and gave way to distress. They had done one another greater physical harm in jest; he was gazing at him thusly, expression twisted in uncertainty, as though a stranger stood before him. Loki felt a reciprocal panicked tug in his gut; there was no persuasion for this. 

“Do I appear to you any less for it?” He asked finally, his intonation expecting a negative response, the same voice he used when luring Thor into theoretical discourse. This time the inquiry drew only a pained expression so that it seemed he might fling his hands up in surrender, at a loss for words and sentiment. Loki realized that he did not know what to do. 

_Neither do I._

Having waited long enough for a reply to his question, he finally recognized that Thor’s silence _was_ the reply, and it struck him with all the force of a well-aimed blow. “What” he breathed, “would you have me do?”

“Forget, Loki.” Picking up the fallen breastplate with a scrape, his throat contracted tightly and deepened his pitch. “I would have you forget.”

 

\-------------

 

Loki raged. His ire had never been so great as it was then; everything thereafter was merely a compilation of it, an addition atop a wide base. So the shadow had made itself trouble again—what use, indeed? Suddenly _their_ actions had become _his_ , and while he had never been pleasing to his father, always, always he had been pleasing to Thor, never cast aside, but often revered. Now even to him he had become an insufferable object, a perpetual threat to his sterling reputation by means of merely existing. Loki loathed him with renewed bathos for his foolishness, for _making_ him hateful to look upon. Thor would rule and Loki, Loki who was forever emblematic of what had made him less a king, would fade into the shadows, his presence both protected and hidden away, his power dwindling to impotency for the sake of Thor’s pious guilt.

_It is a stain on you, and because I know it, I am stained too. You assume I will make this disappear between us with time, the way I have always cleaned up your messes, but I think just this once, you will suffer greatly for this too._

It was in the heat of haste and anger that Loki betook himself from Asgard, entering for the first time in ages the frigid depths of Jotunheim. They gazed upon him strangely, as though already having forgotten the look of the people who had so soundly defeated them a millennium ago. He communicated through messengers to their king, never laying eyes upon him, but speaking only to the sleek black rock of his tower. Yes, there was a gate into Asgard of which they did not know; yes, he knew where the Casket was. If they suspected his treachery to be twofold, more than the brute revenge of appearance, they did not show it. Dull, inward-looking creatures; they could not conceive of an aggression that outpaced bloodshed, and it was over their broken backs that he would step to the throne. 

_I will stain all of Asgard to be my match, dip them in the darkness of mourning, and you, Prince, shining so brightly, will be the one who is alone._

 

\--------------

 

Loki did not know whether the Chitauri were effective teachers, he an apt pupil, or their weapon of choice merely well-made, but he gained mastery over it in little time at all. Unlike his own magic, the staff was entirely divorced from his personal reservoir of energy, draining him not at all in its use. What it could do in practice was magnificent enough, but with the Tesseract he imagined it would rival even the might of the ash staffed Gunghir. It would reduce Mjolnir to crackling ore. 

One day-night they spoke, standing before him with naked red flesh that looked to be perpetually agonized, “It is almost time.”  
Loki bared his teeth in a slicing motion that must once have been a smile. “Good. I am ready.”

Striding the length of their barren planet now with pleasure and not reserve, he called to him his finest regalia, wearing it to feel whole, powerful, and to remember on his own terms. Summoning recollection in terms of a physical device allowed him to guard more carefully against unwanted consideration too, and Loki made a game and then an art of bidding and then sending away various articles, tracing gilded greaves and epaulets, engraved gauntlets covered in miniscule dents from arrows and slingers’ stones. The thin stilettos he carried on his person were nothing to his arsenal now, but their smooth weight was a comfort, and he had no wish to forgo entirely the intimacy of battle that iron weaponry permitted. 

The last was the helmet, surprisingly the most difficult of his panoply to summon despite the familiarity of form. When it came to him, appearing atop his palms and then falling with the weight of well-wrought metal, he traced the backward horns down to the sharp tip so that he nicked his finger, spilling a startling burst of color onto the grey dust between his shoes. It was chilled, brittle beneath his hands.

_The last time I wore this._

It was the evening of Thor’s intended coronation, unknowingly to be delayed and then, for a brilliant few days, rendered altogether impossible. But then, when they stood together, Loki had combated passing pangs of guilt, knowing their citadel had been unlocked from within. While every noble and officer stood in the great hall, waiting for their prince to kneel one final time, for the crown, and then never again ( _never again but for the other, who will always kneel_ ) they did not realize that their fortress was unguarded, exposed. 

The ceremony was a grave, ritualistic affair that hung the rafters with tense silence and restrained energy waiting to burst forth in relieved approval. The nobility wanted to endorse his kingship, to rap the butts of their spears against the tiled floor and then beat the sharpened iron heads to the hide and bronze of their shields in a tooth-rattling cacophony. 

Despite all the pomp of the ceremony, what Loki remembered most clearly, what came to him in nagging, cyclical dreams, was the antechamber, the only space in the great hall not choked with the smoke of incense and the throaty murmur of a crowded room. A bronze cauldron threw fire into the air, burning on clean oil and producing only the haziest of fogs. They were both armed, their clothing the stuff of procession, not battle, showing in bright smears of red and green and cobalt beneath plated iron and bronze. Loki had not been made aware (but it was only right) that he would enter with him. Thor had informed him that morning, his voice rattling with gravity and nerves, “You must walk in with me, that we may show a united front.”

Loki had barely restrained himself from barking out a laugh and hardly paused in his writing, watching the pen scrabble across the curling edges of the page in wisps of letters, “Of course.” 

Thor had treaded lightly about him for days after their truncated confrontation, wary of his wrath, ashamed. He dodged even his shadow, speaking to him with the same caution used by the rest, that same leery regard that said they would not trust him to carry a message, much less the entire kingdom. Baldr had said it once, deep in his cups, “Your ruses are very fine, Loki, and might well end a siege. But a king must be Valhalla-bound, and no one hears there of a magician’s glory in battle.” Thor had not been there, and once Loki had thought he would have leaped to his defense had he heard, but was no longer so certain. Had he always inspired shame in him? Was he always so much the lesser? 

Seeing him there that evening, it was as though nothing wicked had ever passed between them. Loki could feel his anxiety, radiating in a tense aura and tangling with pride and stale confidence. Tracing the harsh profile of his face against the firelight as the evening sun settled into the cradle between the horizon’s mountains, Loki thought he looked very young still, and all that vigor that had sustained him up until this moment was draining out, short-lived as the endeavors of youth usually are. He said what was required of him, and then he said more, voice gentle as though addressing an unbroken horse. 

Loki was surprised at his own sentiment; he was proud of him in some small way, and then overwhelmingly so, at the thought of walking in with him before the rest. _Think what you like, but we are equals. And soon you all will know that._

Something tangible seemed to shift between them, and then Thor rebuffed his praise with an accusation, turning his head away to avoid his gaze. 

“You are incapable of sincerity.” 

Loki remembered his urging the night of the feast and shook his head very slightly, feeling the tug and pull of energy and murmured exchanges without recognizing what needed to be said and had not. Surely the braver of them, this time, Loki was the one to offer it, striding back out onto the precipice with the tentative extension of his hand, tone unaffected, words genuine. 

“You’re my brother, and I do love you.” 

Thor looked upon him, hearing what he wished, perhaps, and swallowed a natural reply so audibly that Loki heard it over the slow hiss of the fire. Choosing not to join him before the gulf that had been of his own creation, he forced Loki back from it, recoiling, and the younger prince only smiled, transforming the gesture into wicked jest and breaking the tension and the tentative thread that bound them.

“Now give us a kiss.” 

There was a brief flicker of chagrin, and then a wash of relief; Thor knew this Loki, and accepted him with the pleasure of camaraderie that he had always imagined stretched between them. Loki thought his skin had never felt more foreign.

Things fell apart readily after that, unraveling according to plan and then spiraling outward. He had not wanted to see his brother put to exile, but the misstep came with a very fine opportunity. A failed opportunity. _But not this time._

He sent the helmet away, preferring the slide of wind through his hair. Midgard would have sun, too, and he thought he had almost forgotten what that felt like. 

He was alone in preparation, his own antechamber, while they gathered about the vortex. Soon men would bow to him. One elegant hand curved, fingers curling inward over air in familiar fashion. A knife appeared, less subtle than the thin steel enfolded in his cloak but stronger, the haft made of ivory, the blade pared down to a glistening tip. 

“It is a very fine knife,” he acknowledged to no one in particular. Turning it about , fingertips traced the arcs of clouds and angles of mountain peaks, the whorls of goat horns. He thought happily, I will kill _her_ with it. 

Concealing the token, he rose to approach the farthest fringes of the eddying air; it devoured sound and light, producing an eerie hue of its own that was too fractured to be any recognizable part of the spectrum. It twisted and unraveled time, and the hypnotic pulse of its energy, the Tesseract at the other end, beckoned him forth. More powerful still, he felt Thanos’ weighted gaze on his shoulder, his reaching out, his suspicion, felt like a blow. 

“You’re wondering if I can kill him,” Loki addressed their leader, his hissing voice silent. Drawing on the heavy leather and velvet of his cloak, he snatched up his weapon, gazing away from the churning vortex ahead. “You shouldn’t.” And on the surface of his thoughts, Loki let him see the crater of his helmet filling with the fruit of a mortal injury, catching the spill of Thor’s life until it stained the brim wine dark. _I will be greater than you because soon you will be nothing at all._

And then Thanos spoke, and Loki realized he had never heard it before, not once in all this time. It was like raw wire dragged down a wall of iron. “We require your _entire_ investment.”

Loki smiled, a wicked rictus that sliced at his face, red and then white. He had never seen this blood-skinned man express doubt and thought that he needed to do so now least of all. 

“You have it, then.” 

Stepping into the vortex, feeling it tear the edges of his person, blurring his silhouette in the bend of space, he reached for his pocket, fingers curling comfortingly over a smooth ivory hilt. 

 

-TELOS-


End file.
